


Paging Dr. Nikiforov

by AntaresPromise



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Humor, M/M, Science Fiction, medical AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-12 05:19:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15332637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntaresPromise/pseuds/AntaresPromise
Summary: "I heard Dr. Nikiforov has the craziest patients," Phichit grinned at Yuuri, his fellow fourth-year medical student."You have no idea."





	Paging Dr. Nikiforov

****“Patient wants to know if she can feed her cat baby formula, I tried to explain over the phone that’s not a good idea, but Victor, she only wants to hear it from you,” exasperated, the young woman at the front desk with brilliant red hair and bellflower eyes sighed into the phone, “no, cats are lactose intolerant. You know, the alternative to calling your doctor’s office is maybe googling or talking to a vet?”  
  
Yuuri waited for her to look up, “Good morning, I’m Yuuri, fourth-year medical student assigned to rotate with Dr. Nikiforov,” his short white-coat pockets much lighter than a year ago. When he first started medical school, he carried everything, including index cards, reflex hammer, notebook, a granola bar, multicolored pen, and even a tuning fork. Now, aside from the granola bar and a sheet of paper folded in four, he only had two pens: the four colored one for himself, and the plain one for lending to other people.

  
The receptionist shook his hand and grinned, “Mila, nice to meet you! Victor is right around the corner.”  
  
Yuuri scanned the clean, warm and bright waiting room of the humble clinic in the suburbs with light-green chairs. Surprised the poster with Dr. Nikiforov and the headline “Top Doc” was nowhere to be seen, Yuuri pushed through the glass door leading to the hall with off-white paint lined with exam rooms.  
  
Despite invitations to join the faculty at the prestigious medical school in this city, Dr. Nikiforov wished to stay in this practice. He graduated from Yuuri’s medical school, the smaller one overshadowed by the Big Fancy Institution that locals applied to as backup or as an afterthought.  
  
Yuuri’s shoulder almost brushed past the medical assistant with a golden mane.

  
“Sorry,” Yuuri ducked out of the way, “I’m Yuuri by the way.”    
  
The medical assistant, who appeared to be no more than twenty, hissed and glared at him muttering, “you should not be allowed to have the same name as me.”  
  
Yuuri shuffled out of the way.  
  
He utilized one of the skills he mastered as a medical student - blending in with the wall - as he waited for Dr. Nikiforov to finish with the phone.  
  
“Good morning, this is Dr. Nikiforov, please give me a call back regarding the results of your biopsy, it’s good news, so I thought I would reach out as soon as I got it in the fax, thanks!”  
  
_He sounds like the kind of doctor I would trust with my own family._ Warmth spread across his cheeks as he knocked the open door twice.  
  
“Hi!” Dr. Nikiforov’s chair creaked as he turned, “welcome,” he flashed a wide grin resembling an actor stepping out of an ad for medical drama. Except in medical dramas the hospital didn’t have cockroaches, the resident wore red heels, and the chest compressions brought patients back 90% of the time, “and please, call me Victor.”  
  
“Yuuri,” his heart pounded as he thumbed the stethoscope snaking around his neck, “fourth year med student.”  
  
“So what do you want to do when you grow up?” that translated to ‘which specialty are you going into?’  
  
Clutching the back of his neck, Yuuri mumbled, “I am thinking about family medicine.” He remembered Phichit making fun of a certain classmate who would pretend that he wanted to be a surgeon in front of surgeons and internal medicine before the hospitalist. _I can never be full of shit like that._

  
Victor’s blue-green eyes lit up, “great, I hope your rotation with me will either solidify that decision or convince you to run in the opposite direction,” he patted the stack of paperwork on the desk resembling a phone book.  
  
Yuuri let out a nervous chuckle as he sat next to the attending that inspired him to go to medical school in the first place.

  
“Some of my patients are, let’s just say particular. They may request that I see them alone. So I am letting you know in advance if you get thrown out of exam rooms, it’s nothing personal,” Victor clicked through his schedule, “the first patient is one year old, here for his well-child visit and vaccines. I saw him since he was born. Let’s go see him together, and later I’ll have you see patients on your own.” 

* * *

  
Unbeknownst to Yuuri, most of the day had already passed.  
  
Victor did not exude any of the egotistical air too familiar to Yuuri. Some attendings strutted in the hospital as if they owned the place. Especially that one who loved to tell lame jokes in the elevator before a circle of residents and medical students that weren’t funny but most people strain their cheek and force out a laugh.

  
Despite his achievements, Victor remained humble. His patients loved him.  
  
In the span of the first day, they froze plantar warts with liquid nitrogen, completed annual physicals, and retrieved foreign objects that shouldn’t end up in certain orifices.  
  
Like Victor warned before, half of the patients kicked Yuuri out of the exam room. _That usually only happens to male medical students in the gynecologist’ office._ Yuuri shrugged as he once again had been politely asked to leave.

He learned to avoid Yuri’s death glare in the hall. 

* * *

  
“Patient called to tell you her medication cabinet collapsed and her bottle of oxycodone fell into the toilet,” Mila crossed her arms.  
  
“What about her heart medication?” Victor paused from typing, starlight locks fell over his eyes.  
  
“She said thankfully those made it. She also asked me to tell you she is not addicted to oxycodone, in fact, she is terrified of becoming dependent on prescription painkillers, but look at this!” Mila thrust a printout from the database tracking every prescribed controlled substance across several states.  
  
Victor raised an eyebrow, “five pharmacies and nine different prescribers.” He covered his eyes and wrinkled his forehead, “okay, please ask her to come into the office to discuss pain medication.”  
  
“Alright,” Mila threw her arms into the air as she vanished down the hall.  
  
“Welcome to the life of a family doctor,” Victor watched Yuuri with an amused expression, “you sure you want to do this?”  
  
Yuuri burst out in laughter, “I do.”  
  
Victor joined him, “I don’t know how Mila puts up me.”  
  
“I don’t either,” Yuuri teased him. 

* * *

  
After Yuuri stayed to help clean the exam room after a poor baby with a nasty GI bug vomited on the wall, Yuri warmed up to him.    
  
“My grandpa made pirozhki, they are in the kitchen,” Yuri tossed a syringe into the sharps container, “I’m letting you have one.”  
  
“Thanks,” Yuuri’s stomach growled, “looking forward to trying it.” _This is the nicest thing you ever said to me._

  
Yuri ignored him for the rest of the afternoon. 

* * *

  
To Yuuri’s surprise, for a doctor, Victor rarely used foul language.  
  
“Fuck,” Victor muttered under his breath, on a cloudy Wednesday afternoon before a thunderstorm, “Chris had to take vacation at this time,” Victor’s white coat fluttered behind him, “Mila, please cancel all of my afternoon patients, I am going have to go downstairs for this one.”  
  
A flash of understanding reached between them, Mila freed the suction cups holding the sign with the word ‘open’ written in red.

  
She locked the front door with elegant letters on the glass: “Dr. Victor Nikiforov, Family Physician  & Dr. Christopher Giacometti, Obstetrics and Gynecology”.  
  
_But there’s only one floor on the clinic,_ Yuuri scratched his head as Mila shut the blinds.  
  
“Yuuri, please, I need your help,” Victor stripped his white coat and hung it at the back of Mila’s chair.  
  
“Victor, you know the consequences of breaching the confidentiality - “ Mila’s eyes widened.  
  
“I’ll take full responsibility. There’s no time, Yuri passes out when he sees alien blood,” Victor snapped his head back facing Yuuri, “I’m going to give you the option to leave and pretend you never heard anything, in fact, I do have a way of extracting short-term memory so you won’t remember any of this. I wouldn’t do that without your permission, so don’t worry." I don’t only see humans in my practice. You see, aliens live amongst us, they always have.”

The next few seconds resembled eternity. 

 _Aliens._ Yuuri froze.

  
Everything clicked like a magnetic puzzle, including the reason half of Victor’s patients refused to be seen by anyone other than him.  
  
Victor dialed the knob on the thermostat and the back wall retreated revealing stairs lit by eerie blue lights like the basement of a mad scientist.  
  
“I may want you to erase this memory later, but I’ll help you,” Yuuri pursed his lips. He followed Victor down the rabbit hole.  
  
“Yuuri,” Yuri smirked, “gown up because you are about to help catch an alien baby.” He seemed to enjoy the aftermath of Yuuri’s shock, “Yes, to get you up to speed, we belong to an organization that provides refuge for intergalactic visitors whose planets were devastated by invaders or natural disasters. They wear a synthetic human bodysuit and blend in with the rest of us, in fact, my grandfather is one the most esteemed makers. And as for me, not to brag or anything, I speak thirty alien languages,” Yuri puffed out his chest.

  
Yuuri caught the navy gown in midair and tried not to stare at Victor unraveling his bow-tie studded with stars and tiny swirling galaxies and his dress shirt to change into sterile scrubs. 

* * *

  
An anxious appearing man in his thirties without hair cupped his forehead with his hands, “please help my wife.”  
  
The woman in his arms didn’t appear pregnant at all.  
  
Yuri rested a hand on the man’s shoulder and switched to a language with whistles and clicks in combination with gestures with his hands.  
  
The man rubbed his wife’s shoulder and nodded.  
  
His hand squeezed her earring on the left.  
  
Yuuri’s lips parted as the color drained from his face, because like a zipper, her face opened from the center, revealing a tiny gold creature with large ears, spindly arms with three long fingers, and a tail that ended in a swirl. _I thought the synthetic human bodysuit is creepy enough, but this is a whole new level._

  
Yuuri remembered his first time scrubbing in as a medical student in a Cesarean section during his mandatory obstetrics rotation. He had never seen so much blood in his life. Despite the warmth dripping from the operating table, soaking his shoes, his heart leaped with joy every time a baby let out his first crisp, raucous cry.  
  
_I have no idea what to expect anymore._ _  
_

* * *

  
“Yuuri, I need you to hold the camera for Yakov to guide us through this, he is an expert xenobiologist known across galaxies.” Victor connected the alien beneath the bright light of the operating theater to instruments resembling the heart monitor with characters Yuuri couldn’t comprehend.  
  
“Who’s Yakov -“  
  
“Vitya,” the monitor overlooking the operating room revealed the ancient face of a stern man, “you must really be out of time to bring in this one.” His hawk-like eyes glanced at Yuuri.  
  
Victor taped the last probe onto the alien’s curved tail, “this is Yuuri, my med student. He is smart, hardworking and he has strong intuition.”  
  
Yuuri’s face burnt crimson beneath the blue surgical mask as he held the curved camera resembling a snake with a bright light at the end. This reminded him of his surgery rotation, where he once held the retractor for hours until he couldn’t feel his left hand anymore.  
  
Sweat dotted on Victor’s forehead, as Yakov half shouted the instructions of anatomical parts Yuuri never heard of before.  
  
_I wonder if there are textbooks depicting alien physiology._ Yuuri eyes widened because he had no clue how Victor managed to locate the alien baby. I have no idea what I am looking at, maybe that’s a good thing. He swallowed the lump at his throat.

  
“Good, a little further to the left, that’s you, camera holder,” Yakov scoffed, “Now Vitya, unravel the distal part and I think you are good to go.”  
  
Amidst the slimy mess of violet and gold, and a sudden burst that splattered Yuuri’s face-shield, Victor retrieved the tiny creature.  
  
“Excellent!” Yakov clapped once, his smile reached his icy blue eyes, “you too, camera holder.”  
  
Yuuri couldn’t help but grin cheek to cheek, as Victor set baby alien on his palm. It resembled a squid from one of those science shows featuring deep sea creatures that could very well be aliens.  
  
Victor laughed as the baby squid shot more slime at Yuuri’s face while curling its tail around his index finger.  
  
“Victor, I’m assuming usually Dr. Giacometti helped with delivering alien babies?”

“Yes, and I held the camera when things get complicated.”  
  
Before leaving the operating theatre, Yakov said, “Vitya, give this one my card.” 

* * *

  
Yuuri passed the family medicine rotation with honors and a stellar letter of recommendation.  
  
He returned to the medical student’s life back at the hospital.  
  
“I’m dying Yuuri,” Phichit rested the side of his face on the cafeteria table over lunch and yawned, “my sole function every morning is walking from the resident’s desk to the printer and fetching the discharge summaries, stapling it, and handing it to her.”  
  
Yuuri chuckled, “she will write in your evaluation ‘he is excellent at stapling.’”

  
“For the residents who taught me, I don’t mind doing scut work as an exchange. But the ones who couldn’t care less about med students, I took extra bathroom and coffee breaks,” Phichit smirked.  
  
“A fair exchange,” Yuuri sipped black tea from his mug. He decided to reserve coffee for residency.  
  
“What about you? How was Dr. Nikiforov? I heard he has the craziest patients.”  
  
“You have no idea,” Yuuri shook his head. _Dr. Nikiforov, your secret is safe with me,_ Yuuri promised in silence.  


* * *

  
On his way home, Yuuri’s hand never left Yakov’s futuristic-looking business card as if it contained answers to all of the secrets of the universe. It had the number 42 on one side. His thumb ran over the embedded digits of the phone number on the other.  
  
‘ _There are whole worlds out there needing our help,’_ Yuri’s voice reverberated in his mind. ‘ _I studied thirty alien languages for this cause.’_ __  
  
‘ _Think about it Yuuri, I, for selfish reasons would love to have you here. But once you come aboard this ship, life will never be the same. Please take your time,’_ Yuuri’s heart fluttered reminiscing about Victor’s gentle voice, or anything related to Victor for that matter.  
  
_This is crazy._ There is a baby alien named Yuuri out there, alive because of the organization hidden in the shadows, because of Victor, and possibly even because of me. Though Yuri claimed the cute little squid was named after him instead, Yuuri wasn’t planning on fighting him over it.

  
His head tilted skyward, his eyes transfixed upon the thousands of stars studded on the velvet blue infinity.

_You only live once right?_

  
He pulled out his phone and dialed.

* * *

**Author’s Note:**

I have always wanted to write a Men in Black AU, hope you like it! I confess to watching Men in Black too many times. 

Some of you may have noticed I am writing a different pseudonym, [this](https://antarespromise.tumblr.com/post/175931021751/the-new-pseudonym) is the story behind why. 

I wanted to open another chapter as my writing changed so much since day 1. 

[More of my SciFi AU here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15078359), and [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14495745). 

 

-A 

[Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/antarespromise)


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